Loving your wife when you hate the romantic industrial complex

Men, as we enter the week of Valentine's Day, is there a part of you that feels a little anxious as sellers of romantic gifts and services peddle their wares and set expectations for how men should go about translating love for their wives? Are you tempted to just write it off as a Hallmark holiday and boycott the whole thing? If so, I think you'll enjoy something my colleagues Randy Stinson and Dan Dumas wrote about this that ran in the Southern Seminary Towers magazine:

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Some men who suspect they should do more to express love to their wives are turned off by what we call the “romantic industrial complex”—the producers of cards, jewelry, flower arrangements, chick flicks, chocolates, candlelit dinners, stuffed bears, getaways and other romantic stuff — vendors who seem to be in a conspiracy to hyper-commercialize romance, they run men through a gauntlet of unrealistic expectations and then extort them into paying to prove their affection. You know it’s gotten out of control when Evergreen Waste Services of Delaware runs an ad that says, “For Valentine’s Day, nothing says ‘I love you’ like affordable, reliable trash service” (Can you imagine the husband that banks his Valentine’s Day on that gesture?).

Because of this kind of craziness, a lot of men we know tend to check out and write it all off as beneath them. There’s a lot to hate about the business aspects of romance. But you have to make sure you don’t throw out your baby (your wife) with the “Romantic Raspberry” scented bath water. You don’t have to become a mindless consumer of the romantic industrial complex, but you do need to love your wife and live with her in an understanding way. What matters is being enough of a student of who your wife is — what delights and encourages her — that you can customize your romantic efforts to her and tune out all the mass marketed stuff that you know doesn’t communicate love to your wife.

This study of your one-of-a-kind wife may lead you to see that what blesses her most are things, like encouraging words, uninterrupted conversations, morning notes, back rubs and other priceless things while expensive gifts and dinners out register little with her if they aren’t given in a way that shows that you know her. Your ongoing effort to know your wife and bless her distinctly may, however, lead you to realize that you need to “get off your wallet” and stop being stingy with your investment in her. And that may mean venturing out into the so-called romantic industrial complex. But you can (and should) bring leadership to the process. Have a good laugh at the “love junk” that gets marketed, but go take dominion and bring something back that shows that you know and cherish your wife. In that spirit, you can buy flowers, chocolates, cards and other things as unto the Lord and all to the glory of God.

I hope this is helpful as you seek to bless your wife this week.

Change the world from your family room

Over the past century, the inertia has been toward turning family and home life inside out. "Prior to the industrial revolution," writes Dr. Albert Mohler, President of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, "most families assumed responsibility for economic production, the education of children, and socialization into the culture. Recreation, entertainment, child rearing, and vocational training were all conducted within the confines of the family."

Over the years, the industrial system encouraged families to out-source all those activities--to help the economy by paying someone else to do them. In many ways, this change was a relief.  Unlike the Ingallses (immortalized in Little House on the Prairie), families no longer had to spend the bulk of their day just trying to get chores done and food on the table. The labor saving devices and division of labor introduced by the Industrial Revolution made home management much simpler.

But something was lost in the process of reengineering all the functions of the family home. According to Allan Carlson and Paul Mero in the book The Natural Family, "Family households, formerly function-rich bee-hives of useful, productive work and mutual support, tended to become merely functionless, overnight places of rest for persons whose active lives and loyalties lay elsewhere."

Carlson and Mero say today's families can still find a way to have "a home that serves as the center for social, educational, economic and spiritual life." New technology and a fresh longing for a sustainable balance between work and family is slowly encouraging families to find ways to reproduce some of the benefits of the preindustrial, home-based family.

Outside-in homes--those in which parents are intentional about "in-sourcing" primary educational responsibilities, child rearing, Christian discipleship, recreation, entertainment, and more--can still have an inside out influence on the world around them. Edmund Burke, an Irish statesman and philosopher in the late 1700's, described the family as an essential foundation for the larger world. "To be attached to the subdivision, to love the little platoon we belong to in society," he wrote, "is the first principle (the germ as it were) of public affections. It is the first link in the series by which we proceed towards a love to our country, and to mankind."

Additionally, men and women who desire to have lives of influence often find that the work of caring for and investing in the next generation is among the most important influence they can have. For all the hopes and dreams we have for our own lives, we often overlook that the under appreciated work of parenting is likely the greatest contribution we'll make. Author Gary Thomas talks about how the genealogy chapters that tell how so-and-so begat so-and-so, may be among the most important in the Bible:

God chooses to simplify these men's lives by mentioning their most important work--having kids, dying, and then getting out the way. I wonder how we might simplify our own lives by recognizing that eighty percent or more of what we spend our time on will ultimately be forgotten. Perhaps we might pay a little more attention to the remaining twenty percent. Indeed, the effort we put into creating a lasting legacy through children and great-children might increase significantly.

This assumes, however, that men and women who are faithful in biological fruitfulness will also be faithful in spiritual fruitfulness. Andreas Köstenberger addresses this in the book God, Marriage and Family:

In godly homes, husband and wife sharpen one another as "iron sharpens iron" (Proverbs 27:17), and their children are drawn into the communal life of the family and into the path of discipleship pursued and modeled by their parents, which fulfills the Lord's desire for godly offspring (Malachi 2:15).

This too is part of obeying the risen Christ's commission for his followers to "go...and make disciples" (Matthew 28:18-20).

To show how this can happen, Köstenberger provides a compelling picture of how God designed biological fruitfulness and spiritual fruitfulness to intersect:

What God desires is happy, secure, and fulfilled families where the needs of the individual family members are met but where this fulfillment is not an end in itself but becomes a vehicle for ministry to others. In this way God uses families to bring glory to himself and to further his kingdom, showing the world what he is like--by the love and unity expressed in a family by the husband's respect for his wife, the wife's submission to her husband, and the children's obedience (even if imperfect). What is more, the husband-wife relationship also expresses how God through Christ relates to his people the church. Thus it can truly be said that families have a vital part to play in God's plan to "bring all things in heaven and on earth together under one head, even Christ," "for the praise of his glory" (Ephesians 1:10,12 NIV).

In our own "begatting," in our intentionality about taking primary responsibility for the care and discipline of of our children and especially in the faithful discipleship of our children, we can to some degree, and often beyond our what we ever would have imagined, change the world from our family room.

Adapted from portions of Start Your Family: Inspiration for Having Babies.

Read blog posts related to changing the world from your family room.

The Demographic Cliff

In all the recent debates about U.S. fiscal policy, debt and threats of a fiscal cliff, an underlying problem has received little attention. "Forget the debt ceiling. Forget the fiscal cliff, the sequestration cliff and the entitlement cliff," Jonathan V. Last wrote in the Wall Street Journal on Saturday. "Those are all just symptoms. What America really faces is a demographic cliff: The root cause of most of our problems is our declining fertility rate." The article is an excerpt from Last's new book that comes out today whose title says it all: What to Expect When No One's Expecting, but the blurb for the book fills in some helpful details:

For years, we have been warned about the looming danger of overpopulation: people jostling for space on a planet that’s busting at the seams and running out of oil and food and land and everything else. It’s all bunk. The "population bomb" never exploded. What to Expect When No One’s Expecting explains why the population implosion happened and how it is remaking culture, the economy, and politics both at home and around the world.

We have enjoyed the writing Last has been doing on marriage and family for the Weekly Standard and were glad to see him write such a substantive book on the significant difference it makes when countries have fewer babies. What we especially appreciate is that Last is willing to describe the problem in great detail, but then also prescribe a way forward. And his prescription is simple:

In the face of this decline, the only thing that will preserve America's place in the world is if all Americans—Democrats, Republicans, Hispanics, blacks, whites, Jews, Christians and atheists—decide to have more babies.

He goes on to to address a variety of cultural attitudes (such as our preoccupation with an exalted view of "happiness" that drives us away from procreation) and policies that should change (Social Security reform, college cost management, land management planning, etc.) in order to make it easier to welcome babies.

Dodge Ram's Charlie Brown Moment

I still remember the ad: Mean Joe Green limping off the field down a gray corridor to the locker room, where a boy of about eight offers to help. Mean Joe says no. The boy insists that Mean Joe take his Coke. The football player relents, chugs the brown soda, then turns to the disappointed kid and utters the famous line, "Hey kid, catch!" He tosses his sweaty jersey to the disbelieving kid and smiles from ear-to-ear. Have a Coke and a smile!

It's about as syrupy as the Cola's secret formula, especially viewed through today's eyes. But when it first aired in 1979, that ad hit its mark. We were less cynical then; more open to pictures of brotherly kindness. A lot has changed. I used to watch the Super Bowl and its ads with my parents--I was nine when that Coke ad ran. I don't remember worrying about what we might see. It was pre-DVR but for the most part, the remote control's off button was untouched. No longer.

Last night we stayed close to the power switch on our TV (the remote's broken and we still don't have DVR), wanting to watch some of the game, but doing our best to weed out the raunchy and degrading commercials. Not just because we have four children, but because most of what aired during the time outs and half time is twaddle.

By the final quarter, I was in bed half asleep. Sometime before the Ravens' triumph, Steve started talking about the Tweets that were going around about "the farmer" ad. Being a big Paul Harvey fan, he pulled it up on his iPhone and played the spot. In my half awake state I listened, dumbfounded.

According to ABC News online, the ad "wasn’t flashy or filled with special effects but Dodge Ram’s Super Bowl commercial that featured the late radio broadcaster Paul Harvey’s tribute to U.S. farmers might have won the hearts and minds of viewers Sunday night. … The spot immediately set Twitter ablaze, with viewers registering their overwhelmingly positive reaction to the commercial."

It was hard to believe such a sincere piece could make the Super Bowl cut. Harvey praised the selfless, sacrificial, tough, unbending, tender nature that is essential to a farmer--"somebody who'd bale a family together with the soft strong bonds of sharing." Listening to Harvey's comforting voice, I felt like Linus searching with Charlie Brown for the perfect Christmas tree in a psychedelic age. Surrounded by strobe lights and towering pink, orange and yellow aluminum Christmas "trees," Charlie Brown sees the twig that captures his heart.

"Gee, do they still make real Christmas trees?" Linus asks, unbelieving, as Charlie Brown declares about the twig, "I think this tree needs me."

And so I fell asleep thankful, surprised by the answer to my Linus question. "Gee, do they still make sincere, hard-work affirming, sacrifice honoring, soul-inspiring Super Bowl commercials?"

It turns out, that in the midst of the garish, glitzy, soul-eroding fare, they do.

Thanks, Dodge.

Link Between Spiritual Formation and Family Formation

As I was finishing my master's degree in public policy I needed to find a topic for my thesis. For several years, I had been interested in the differences between baby boomers and the generation I grew up in that has been called generation X, baby busters, mosaics, etc. Around that time, I read a variety of articles about how my generation voted at lower percentages than their parents did at their age. I decided to take that on as my thesis topic. I was going to discover what shared life experiences and attitudes of my generation was driving down our voter participation. Not too long into my research, however, I had to throw out my original hypothesis and start over. While popular news articles kept speculating that my generation wasn't voting because of various cultural influences, the research pointed strongly to another less publicized factor--life stage. People who are married and have children have more tangible motivations to vote. They are motivated by what some call "bread and butter" issues related to property taxes, schools, safety and other day-to-day issues that tend to be of less interest to singles. The drop in voter participation tracked fairly neatly with the generational delay of marriage and starting a family. As my generation has gotten around to these life stages, we've improved on voter participation.

Something very similar is going on in churches. Increasingly, churches are concerned about what some call the "graduation evacuation"--the tendency of people who were raised in Christian homes to disconnect from church shortly after graduating from high school and not finding their way back. As young adults show greater detachment from the church, all kinds of theories are proposed about what's keeping them away and what churches can do to get them back. Many of the speculations are similar to the ones I read back in the nineties about my generation and their voting habits--all focused on various generational attitudes that needed to be addressed through creative ministry engagement such as coffee bars, cool music, casual services, movie clips, etc.

In his book, After the Baby Boomers, Princeton professor Robert Wuthnow shows the shortcomings of this approach:

In the absence of solid information, speculation about the religious needs and interests of the next wave runs rampant. Self-styled cultural experts have been arguing that young adults will be the leaders of a great spiritual revival. ... Other forecasters are placing their bets on technology. Persuaded that religion is somehow a function of gadgets and electronics, they predict an Internet revolution in which congregations will be replaced by Web sites and chat rooms. Still others see in their crystal balls that young adults will flock to jeans-and-sweatshirt ministries where everything is warm and supportive -- as if that were something new.

The truth is, these futuristic speculations make headlines, but seldom make sense. The reason is that they are the product of someone's imagination, rather than being grounded in any systematic research -- or, for that matter, a very good understanding of young adulthood and social change. Pastors and interested lay leaders can titillate themselves reading such speculation in religious magazines. But they need to realize how flimsy this sort of information is.

Wuthnow goes on to show what research actually reveals:

Religious involvement is influenced more by whether people are married, when they get married, whether they have children, and how many children they have than almost anything else.

Similar to voting, marriage and kids give young adults more direct reasons to connect to a congregation. I like how Dr. Leon Kass puts it in the book Wing to Wing, Oar to Oar:

Marriage and procreation, are, therefore, at the heart of a serious and flourishing human life, if not for everyone at least for the vast majority. Most of us know from our own experience that life becomes truly serious when we become responsible for the lives of others for whose being in the world we have said, "We do." It is fatherhood and motherhood that teach most of us what it took to bring us into our own adulthood. And it is the desire to give not only life but a good way of life to our children that opens us toward a serious concern for the true, the good, and even the holy. Parental love of children leads once wayward sheep back into the fold of church and synagogue. In the best case, it can even be the beginning of the sanctification of life--yes, even in modern times.

For pastors, parents and mentors who are praying for spiritual formation in the twenty and thirtysomethings they know, it appears that an investment in family formation is the better investment.

Do-It-Yourself Family Making

It seems that couples who want to get married and start a family today are on their own--whether they want to or not, they are left to do it themselves. Consider the observation of sociologist Dr. Leon Kass in his anthology Wing to Wing, Oar to Oar:

...for most of America's middle- and upper-class youth--the privileged college-educated and graduated--there are no known explicit or even tacit social paths directed at marriage. People still get married--though later, less frequently, more hesitantly, and by and large, less successfully. People still get married in churches and synagogues--though often with ceremonies and vows of their own creation. But for the great majority the way to the altar is uncharted territory. It's every couple on its own bottom, without a compass, often without a goal. Those who reach the altar seemed to have stumbled upon it by accident.

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After “stumbling onto the altar by accident,” many couples back their way into parenting. A third of all pregnancies in marriage are unplanned--leaving families formed without much vision or preparation. Unfortunately, it seems that it's only when couples show up in churches with kids that pastors begin to engage and start doing family ministry. Few churches invest in family formation--in actually helping couples to marry well and start a family with vision and preparation to begin with.

For that matter, few parents are investing in their son or daughter's path to family. Consistently, parents will define success in their roles as preparing their children for college and the workplace. Recently, more parents have gotten the message from their churches that success also means preparing their children for eternity–introducing them to a vibrant faith during their formative years. But not enough parents feel it's their role to prepare their children for families of their own.

Too many are stuck in the cultural mindset that parents should be hands-off and let their children follow their own hearts in their paths to marriage and children. Others feel they should take the multi-cultural path and let their children choose whatever form of relationship they want to have as adults without elevating marriage and family among other choices. But when three quarters of high school seniors tell the Monitoring the Future survey that getting married and starting a family are extremely important to them, shouldn't parents be more invested in that goal?

We're told that this generation of helicopter parents have gone overboard in managing their children's lives. But when it comes to helping their children marry well, it seems they are either checking out or actually discouraging marriage. In the Touchstone magazine article, “Unmarried, Still Children,” Joan Frawley Desmond talks about children who've been raised for everything except marriage. She writes:

Today, parents have a tough time understanding their proper role. Not only has the culture embraced the good of individual autonomy—as opposed to parental authority and familial responsibility—but radical social change has bred confusion about what constitutes the proper goal of adulthood. ... Their children are deemed incapable of bearing the weight of marriage. Everything must be in place before they can contemplate such a momentous—potentially “destabilizing”—step.

When we lived in Colorado, I spoke with a mentor who has children my age. He and his wife worked hard to stay invested in their children's lives and paths to family, but he told me about a friend of his who wasn't invested. This friend of his shared his anxiety over the guy his daughter was dating, but then said he didn't think it was his place to inject himself. “Why shouldn't you get involved in your daughter's choice of a spouse?” our mentor asked him, “this guy could potentially be in your life making trouble for a long time and leaving you to pick up the pieces as the dad and grandpa. Now is the time to get involved, even if it's awkward.”

Can't we do better?

Can parents recover their roles in helping their children to marry well and start strong families? Can churches do more pre-family ministry? Can some older couples step up and serve as mentors to fill in the gaps?

Power for Parenting

Not long after we left the hospital with our firstborn (and the middle-of-the-night assistance of nurses and staff) I realized that parenting requires supernatural power to do well, for God’s glory. But that’s precisely what we have in Christ, through the promised Holy Spirit, our Helper (John 14:15-17). Just as Jesus (in the flesh, living as fully man) was, in his humanity, able to obey, so too can we obey God. By the power of the Holy Spirit.

I’m learning this and more with the help of Bruce Ware’s excellent new book, The Man Christ Jesus.

If you’re blessed with children, and they slept most of last night (and even more if they didn’t!), take some time in your waking hours to strengthen your soul with this excellent book.

A Social Network That Takes Marriage Seriously

Dr. Brad Wilcox is one of the top family scholars in America. His research at the University of Virginia focuses on marriage and cohabitation and on the ways that gender, religion, and children influence the quality and stability of American family life.

A few years ago, Dr. Wilcox took the time to answer a few questions from us about how couples go about forming families today and the role parents, pastors and mentors can play in supporting them. The following is a reprint from that interview:

Based on the research you’ve seen, do you have a sense of how many American couples go into marriage and parenting with a sufficient amount of vision and preparation? Is it the majority or the minority?

Most couples in the United States who marry are exposed to cursory or no marital preparation. They may attend one or two sessions with a layperson, pastor, or priest but generally do not get the thorough preparation they need to increase their odds of marital success.

On the other hand, a large minority of couples who get married in churches are exposed to a premarital preparation that does a good job of inventorying their strengths and weaknesses, preparing them for the key challenges of married life (e.g., money, sex, children, gender differences in relationship styles, and learning to sacrifice for the good of their spouse), and giving them a theological framework for thinking about marriage and family life.

A hundred years ago, parents, pastors and mentors played a very active role in helping couples in the United States to marry well and then to support them in starting a family. Today, couples are much more autonomous in their approach to family making. What difference does that make?

Well, we know that is hard for couples to go it alone, and yet they are now more likely to try to do that, as research by Paul Amato at Penn State and his colleagues indicates. The problem with couples trying to do it all on their own is that no spouse is capable of meeting their spouse’s deepest desires for intimacy and meaning and—of course—no spouse is perfect.

By contrast, couples who have family members, friends, and fellow churchgoers who are committed to their marriage are likely to get advice, as well as moral and practical support, that makes married life easier for them. In fact, we know that one of the best predictors of marital success is being embedded in a social network that takes marriage seriously. So couples should seek out friends who share their commitment to marriage.

What do churches and families stand to gain by coming alongside couples in their paths to marriage and family?

Marriage is one of the most important social supports of faith in America. Adults who are married are much more likely to attend church than are adults who are single or divorced. This is especially true for men. Likewise, children who have been raised in a stable, intact, married home are much more likely to stick with their faith than are children who have been affected by divorce or single parenthood.

What are the simplest things pastors, parents and mentors can do to influence how the next generation of families form?

One of the most important things that pastors and lay leaders in churches can do to strengthen marriage is to provide their adult members, and the youth in their church, with a realistic model of married life.

Marriage is not about finding and sustaining an ideal soulmate relationship. Yes, love is important. But marriage is also about regular sex, having and rearing children, providing practical and emotional support to a spouse, establishing a common economic enterprise, treating one’s kin (including one’s in-laws) with love and respect, and growing in the faith.

Paradoxically, couples who understand that marriage is about many different goods in life (not just an intense emotional relationship) are more likely to enjoy a happy, lifelong marriage than couples who see marriage through a soulmate lens.

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W. Bradford Wilcox is Director of the National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia, Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Virginia, and a member of the James Madison Society at Princeton University.

Brad Wilcox earned his undergraduate degree at the University of Virginia and his Ph.D. at Princeton University. Prior to coming to the University of Virginia, he held research fellowships at Princeton University, Yale University and the Brookings Institution.

Mr. Wilcox’s research focuses on marriage, parenthood, and cohabitation, and on the ways that gender, religion, and children influence the quality and stability of American marriages and family life. He has published articles on marriage, cohabitation, parenting, and fatherhood in The American Sociological Review, Social Forces, The Journal of Marriage and Family and The Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion. With Nicholas Wolfinger, Wilcox is now writing a book titled, Soul Mates: Religion, Sex, Children, & Marriage among African Americans and Latinos, for Oxford University Press. With Eric Kaufmann, Wilcox is finishing a book on the causes and consequences of low fertility in the West. He is also the coauthor of Gender and Parenthood: Biological and Social Scientific Perspectives (forthcoming from Columbia University Press).

A Drought of Children in California

California is the most populous state in the United States, but the number of children there is shrinking, leaving the state “ill-equipped for boomer retirement” according to an article in the Wall Street Journal. Birth rates are now below replacement level for whites, Asians and African-Americans. Rates among Hispanics had been high but are now dropping steeply and are also expected to drop below replacement in the next decade.

“The shrinking pool of youngsters coincides with a bulging population of older people,” the article explains. In other words, California is growing very European—it has promised generous benefits that depend on a growing population while cultivating a culture that doesn’t welcome enough new life to keep the scheme going. This is not sustainable.

What to Teach Your Children

Trillia Newbell has a good word about what we, as Christian parents, should be teaching our children. In view of recent headlines, but even more in view of God’s Word, she writes: “I don’t want my kids to be surprised by fiery trials as if the possibility of persecution for following Christ were unexpected or unbelievable. I want them to know there is a cost to being a disciple and that the world won’t be eager to support their faith and they may even experience hate (1 John 3:13). I don’t want to romanticize Christianity. I want to make sure they know the truth, you really can gain the whole world and forfeit your soul (Mark 8:36).

“But I want to teach them that laying down their lives for the sake of the gospel is worth it. I want to remind them that Jesus laid down his life, not for friends, but for enemies. I want to remind them that we should love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us (Matthew 5:44). I want to teach them that our treasure isn’t on earth but in Heaven.”

Read her column here.

Does Church Attendance Signal True Faith?

Today on Boundless.org I answer a question from a Christian woman whose boyfriend lied about going to church. What’s worse, the lie or his time away from the body? And what, if anything, does it all mean for their relationship going forward? Should she just forgive and forget? My answer is here.

WSJ's Pro-Human Ethic

“My editors made it clear they were guided by a very different idea: that human beings ought to be seen as minds rather than mouths.” That’s journalist William McGurn writing in today’s Wall Street Journal about his bosses at the editorial pages, explaining what makes them different from most papers and news outlets culture-wide. McGurn learned that idea well, adding his voice to “the hopeful writing about human possibility” being done by a handful of economists.

In his farewell column as he heads to the New York Post as editorial-page editor, the value of optimism about new life, or rather the implications of the “humans as mouths” view, is on display in another article three pages away. In “Slowing Birthrates Weigh on Europe’s Weak Economies,” we read the story of a city in Portugal where ongoing austerity measures are in view in Every area but one: birth incentives. “The awards of up to $1300 to new mothers, as well as free nursery services and tax breaks on homes for young couples” will continue in a desperate effort to encourage babies. Why? More people are dying there than being born and there aren’t enough young workers to support those aging out of the workforce.

Back when we were making our excuses for delaying starting a family, our professor Hubert Morken challenged our notions of what’s financially responsible:

“Budget for everything but babies,” he said. “Babies are wealth!”

I’m thankful for newspapermen like McGurn who see the reason for his exuberance for new life. (Dr. Morken was bullish on family for many reasons beyond the pragmatic, but that’s another post for another day.)

We wish you well in your new endeavor, Mr. McGurn, and hope your move will mean another newspaper that understands the good gift of human potential and possibility. We may have to add another paper to our morning routine.

(McGurn’s full column, “The Education of a Newspaperman,” is online)

She Wants a Baby

Early in our marriage, Candice and I used to take long walks in our neighborhood to discuss the week ahead. Sometimes we talked about the future, but there was always a clear line between immediate tasks, like “get the oil changed in the car,” and future plans, like “get rich and build our dream home on five acres.”

One day in the middle of a walk, Candice said, “I want to have a baby.” I thought, in this particular instance, that she meant a hypothetical baby set somewhere in the future. So I agreed that it was a good idea. Then she clarified that she wanted a baby now.

At that point, I suspected she was just having an emotional flare-up. There was simply no logic in what she was saying. She knew the status of our bills; she knew we couldn’t afford to have a baby. Besides, we had only been married a little more than a year and still had a lot of exploring to do as new residents of Colorado.

I realized I had to play the role of crisis manager. I had to talk her back from the ledge and encourage her to abandon the dangerous leap she was contemplating. Reasoning from logic, I talked about our finances not adding up. I reminded her of the dramatic adjustments a baby would require to our social lives, our living arrangements, and our concept of free time.

She nodded her head a lot, but I didn’t seem to be getting through. My reasons weren’t working. She wasn’t taking no for an answer. But I knew I wasn’t ready to say yes. The impact of this decision just seemed too significant to be made during a casual walk around the neighborhood. I wasn’t against having kids—I just didn’t think this was the best time. I had to find a compromise. Knowing she wouldn’t accept no, I said, “Yes … but … let’s just wait a little longer. Let’s pay off some bills, squeeze in some more adventures. Why hurry? We still have plenty of time.”

I waited for her response. She seemed to be considering my counteroffer. As she nodded her head in consent, I knew I had done it—I got her to hit snooze on her biological clock.

That is, until we went on another walk—this time with an older couple that had mentored us when we were dating.

Hubert and Mary Morken are action people. They like their walks brisk and over rough terrain if it’s available. My breath ran short several times as we climbed hills and dodged rocks with this couple the age of our parents. A sign along the path we hiked read, “Beware of rattlesnakes,” but I was more afraid of the conversation taking place between the women in front of me. Mary and Candice were talking as intensely as we were hiking. I couldn’t hear everything they were saying, just an occasional word—fertility, baby and money—among them. I knew the issue of having kids was, once again, front and center.

(From the prologue of Start Your Family)

New Christian fiction dramatizes likely demographic trend

We’ve been looking forward to the release of the new book Fatherless: A Novel by Dr. James Dobson and Kurt Bruner.  It’s the first in a dystopian trilogy that looks ahead to see how today’s demographic trends could play out.  Here’s the publisher’s description:

The year is 2042, and a long-predicted tipping point has arrived. For the first time in human history, the economic pyramid has flipped: The feeble old now outnumber the vigorous young, and this untenable situation is intensifying a battle between competing cultural agendas. Reporter Julia Davidson-a formerly award-winning journalist seeking to revive a flagging career-is investigating the growing crisis, unaware that her activity makes her a pawn in an ominous conspiracy. Plagued by nightmares about her absent father, Julia finds herself drawn to the quiet strength of a man she meets at a friend’s church. As the engrossing plot of FATHERLESS unfolds, Julia will face choices that pit professional success against personal survival in an increasingly uncertain and dangerous world.

In the dystopian tradition of books like 1984, Brave New World, and The Hunger Games, FATHERLESS vividly imagines a future in which present-day trends come to sinister fruition.

We’ve traded notes with Kurt Bruner about this demographic trend for several years now and we’re excited to see him collaborate with Dr. Dobson to dramatize what the future may hold as current attitudes about family making play out.

Read the first chapter of Fatherless online.

"Teaching 'Taco Bell's Canon'" Makes Me [sic]!

Retired college professor James E. Courter's students proved with hilarity that reading is essential to writing. In "Teaching Taco Bell's Canon," he provides ample evidence that hearing something and being able to write it are two entirely different things. He calls his former students' "literary sub-genre" a "stream of unconsciousness." Consider these winners:

One guy admitted that he had trouble getting into "the proper frame of mime" for an 8 a.m. class. … Another lamented not being astute enough to follow the lecture on "Taco Bell's Canon" in music appreciation class. … One complained that his roommate was "from another dementian." Another was irritated by a roommate's habit of using his "toilet trees."

The examples go on. And while his column was good for a laugh on the treadmill, reason enough to run a few extra minutes, it both encourages me and gives me pause. Pause, for I realize some of these young people will one day assume roles of responsibility that will have consequences for the communities we live in (imagine a professional whose every email, letter, and printed speeches contains multiple occurrences of [sic]--the bracketed word that shows an odd or erroneous spelling is printed exactly as the author wrote it!). Encouragement, for I'm convinced more than ever that it's right that parents cut back on modern entertainment and distractions -- TV, iPhones, internet, computer games, etc., -- in exchange for reading.

Read! Uplift the importance of reading lots of books, as often as possible. Read to your children and read to yourself. Order books from the library and bring home stacks and stacks as varied and interesting as you can find. Use good, reliable books of books and lists of books to find suggestions. If your kids don't like to read, read to them. They like you. And likely you'll be surprised how much they'll enjoy being read to. Even the older ones! And if you don't like to read, consider the reasons. It does take effort, but all things worth doing, do.

May it not be said of us by our children that books weren't often a source of entertainment or discussion, or even present, in our homes. The consequences of too-little reading are too great.

Courter wraps with this sobering thought:

Among students' biggest complaints is that hey have to write so much in college. In his end-of-semester evaluation, one honest soul complained that "writing gives me fits." Sad to say, it's not uncommon to hear students remark on how much they look forward to being done with English.

Who knows what language they'll use then?